


The Mistakes Our Fathers Made

by Pythia (Mythichistorian)



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 23:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4980076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythichistorian/pseuds/Pythia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes I sit and unravel quantum equations and wonder ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mistakes Our Fathers Made

_.. allowing a modulation of the initiated temporal wave. Preliminary test results have been promising._

I sit back from the keyboard, study what I have just written, and frown at it with frustrated irritation.

_Promising, huh? I wish ..._

Unravelling the renowned Doctor Beckett’s notes is a little like untangling overcooked spaghetti from the guts of a _very_ expensive stereo while trying hard not to leave the slightest trace behind. And _yes_ , I do know exactly what that’s like - it’s a long story, involving a hysterical Tina, a missed anniversary, and the impending return of a short-tempered Admiral from a _very_ fraught meeting with the Project Committee. It’s a story I’m saving, too. For the one man who’ll not only appreciate it, but will swear very solemnly _not_ to repeat it. Because if Al Calavicci ever finds out what I had to do to save both his love life _and_ his precious hi-fi, my life won’t be worth living.

Not for the fifteen minutes it will take for him to get over it ...

I sigh, reaching to save the latest version of the file. Not only is it convoluted work, it’s _slow_. Impossibly slow, a long hard trudge through the workings of a man’s mind - and _that_ a mind not one in a million could keep up with, let alone comprehend all its complexities.

_If anyone can do this, sweetheart, **you** can ..._

Such faith in an untested child, I think - ironically, of course. My qualifications are impeccable, my abilities unquestioned. I’ve had a lot to prove over the years. Who wouldn’t, being raised as I was, my mother’s child and _only_ my mother’s child; a struggle for acceptance in a world that didn’t want to throw away its prejudices?

It helps when you’re not only beautiful but brilliant - the Admiral’s words, _not_ mine, I should point out. You can have dreams then. Dreams of working with the most talented people in their respective fields, helping to develop ground-breaking technology and saving the world ...

_I always wanted to save the world._

I’m my father’s daughter in so many ways, you see. In the way I think, the way I _feel_. And - like his other, so much more _public_ child - I’m unquestionably unique.

A self-contradiction.

A _paradox._

Sometimes I sit and unravel quantum equations and wonder:

_Would he have chosen me for his team if he’d **known**?_

Another paradox; an unsolvable one, no matter how many times I examine the arguments. Because before he left, before all this began, I wasn’t _on_ the team. Even though I remember all those hectic early days, and the anguish, the anxiety, and the _exhilaration_ of that first precipitate Leap.

A victim of reconstructed time.

At least I only have _one_ set of memories, not the uncountable number that the Admiral carries about in his head these days. I have perfect recall - an eidetic memory - and I’m not sure I could cope with all those alternatives.

None of us are entirely sure how he does it.

_That’s if he **does**_ **,** _of course ..._

I remember the day with exactitude; can recall the precise moment that he walked out of the Imaging Chamber and _looked_ at me, the way he’s been looking at me ever since.

As if I had suddenly become something infinitely precious. Something he’d prayed for and never believed he’d get; a sign, an _omen_. A promise perhaps. That - _whatever_ happened - there would always be a reason for staying in the fight.

It scared the hell out of me for a while.

I’d already figured out the reason. Of course I had. _I’d_ known for quite a time; not after the first Leap into my mother’s life, but certainly after the second, and when it came to the _third ..._

Like I said: I’m my father’s daughter. I can put two and two together and come up with S { f /5} *v every time. But it was hard enough being the junior member of this bunch of eccentric wannabe geniuses, without suddenly having to live up to a legacy I hadn’t even _suspected_ might belong to me.

And it wasn’t just finding out who my father _was_ \- it was finding that, as far as _he’s_ concerned, I wasn’t actually conceived until six years after I joined his project.

_The story of my life - as illustrated by Escher ..._

I tell myself I’ll get over it - that I’ve recovered from the shock and the denial, and that I can deal with the rollercoaster ride of knowing who he _is_ and knowing what he’s done and knowing that he’s still out there, and that we have to bring him _home -_

I’m getting as good at this self-deception stuff as _Donna_ is.

I used to hero-worship the ground he walked on; I would envy the wife he cherished so highly, and treasure the days I earned his praise or caught his eye. Not from any _intimate_ angle, you understand. Just for the pleasure of being treated as his peer instead of his student; if I’d known - ah, if I’d only _known ..._

But none of it had happened before he’d Leaped. None of it at all ...

In the beginning (great start for a story, that ) there hadn’t even _been_ a Sammy-Jo Fuller. Any more than there’d been a Doctor Eleese acting as Project Director, or a Diane MacBride in charge of the Committee. Only a driven man with a crazy dream, and a jaded, world-weary Navy officer who’d still had vision and imagination enough to actually believe in him.

Nobody _else_ did ...

Then he Leaped, and he Leaped again. He changed time, and he changed the world, and he goes _on_ changing it, Leap after Leap, life after life, time after time. Crafting a world that _allows_ him to do so; by changing the committee, by reshaping his own life - by creating _me._

I know these things even though I cannot possibly remember there ever being any differences. I know them because they are there in the equations, in the stark lines of mathematics, in the material Ziggy gives me to analyse, and in the look that haunts the Admiral’s eyes ...

And I wonder:

_Where is it going to end?_

Where, not when. This isn’t a question of time, no matter that it looks that way. Page by page I painstakingly untangle his work, interpret his commentaries, and come to understand him, the way he thinks, the fundamental things he believes. (Have his beliefs been shaken by his own influence? I have no way to measure that, no way to know how he has changed _himself_ over the years.) There is a _certainty_ in those notes that speaks to me; a logic of event and process, a pattern of interactive effect that - once started - can only be followed through to a directed end.

_Did you know what you started, Sam Beckett?_

Did you know you could never come home without me?

I’m not so arrogant as to think that might be the case. Among those few people who _know_ \- and it’s not that many, thank god - opinion is divided. Doctor Eleese - rationalising her complex and confused reactions towards me - maintains I’m a fortuitous accident; Ziggy defines it in more scientific terms, in aspects of quanta and probability. Personally, I prefer the Admiral’s view of things: that I am a child of providence, a gift of god. It’s a very _selfish_ preference, I have to admit.

He treats me like a princess these days - as if I were _his_ daughter. _In loco parentis_ you might say. Complete with the chowing out when I require one, and the offer of a shoulder to cry on when I need _that_ instead. It’s disconcerting. I’ve never had a father - and now I seem to have acquired two ...

Verbeena says I’m good for him - so I add _that_ into my equations, another factor to account for my presence, another vector of effect to include in the overall pattern of events.

_The greatest benefit for the widest number of people._

The primal basis which Ziggy uses to define the odds for every Leap.

Like me, she struggles with incomplete information. Like me, she can be proven wrong, although she takes her failures badly, whereas I try and learn from mine, but we both determine to do better the next time. After all, we have a common goal, she and I.

We want our father _home._

Wise men learn from the mistakes of others, they say. But if that first Leap into the unknown was an error of judgement, then what am I?

Another mistake?

A piece of the wreckage he created on the day he shattered his life into those of a thousand others?

Or a fragile hope for a future that might not otherwise come to be?

The Sam Beckett I _thought_ I knew was a smartassed jerk; one filled with impatience for those who couldn’t keep up with him, inclined to steamroller his way ahead without a thought for those he left behind. No room on _his_ team for doubts or hesitations. _You do it that way because I say so ..._

Don’t get me wrong - I admired the man very much. But I wasn’t entirely sure that I _liked_ him. I often wondered what it was about him that inspired such relentless loyalty.

I guess I didn’t really know him at all.

When I was young - much younger than I am now, a child enthralled with the entire world - I met a man who changed my life. Who gave me a future and reaffirmed my faith in _possibilities._ Who had a light in his eyes and a warmth in his heart for which I yearned without understanding why.

I trusted him. _Believed_ in him.

I still do.

He speaks to me every day; through the scribbled notes he left behind, through the determined faith he has inspired in his people, and through the many evidences of his genius that surround me on all sides.

And the more I listen to the voices he left behind him, the more certain I become of my purpose here. The more I understand how much he and I are of one mind.

He does not remember this world that waits for him; he cannot measure the pain in his wife’s eyes, nor see the dedication his people offer to support his cause. But _I_ can. I have his eyes and his heart, and I know what it would mean to him.

He’s out there somewhere, correcting the mistakes that others have made, putting right what once went wrong. Paying cosmic reparation for his miscalculation, that desperate Leap that was meant to prove so much ...

And I will find _some_ way to make it right; to bring him back. Whatever it may cost. Because everything I have - everything I _am_ is his gift to me.

Because everyone’s entitled to make one mistake in their life, right?

Besides - I’m _his_ daughter.

I’m as stubborn as hell, and I don’t give up my causes easily.

_Or my dreams ..._

The PC bleeps a quiet acknowledgment. _File saved._ Time to get back to work, Sammy-Jo Fuller. Save the introspection for another day ...

"You still at it, sweetheart?"

The warm voice drifts in from behind me, tainted with weariness. It’s been a long day. They’re _all_ long days, here at Quantum Leap. I turn, smiling my greetings as I do so.

"I thought you’d gone home _hours_ ago, Admiral. Or do we have a new arrival?"

He shakes his head, moving to lean over my shoulder and study what I’m working on. "Not yet. I had some paperwork to clear up. You eaten this evening?"

"No," I admit, realising that I haven’t. I haven’t eaten _lunch_ either. I never seem to get the time ...

He laughs. Softly. "Thought not," he says. His eyes add the rest. _Just like Sam ..._ "Come on, Doctor Fuller. I’ll buy you supper."

"Uh-uh," I correct, reaching to close down my files, to mark my place and make sure I can pick up the threads on the following day. " _My_ turn. I owe you one."

"Don’t I wish," he jokes in reflex reaction, and I throw him the expected look - forbearing, a little pained.

"I’ll tell Tina," I threaten - an empty threat, as he well knows. He grins and offers me his arm; irrepressible, totally unashamed.

As usual.

"Goodnight, Ziggy," I call over my shoulder as we leave.

"Goodnight, Doctor Fuller. Good _night,_ Admiral," is the sultry response. She powers down the lights behind us, cloaking her world in still and silent shadows. Keeping her watch with faithful, tireless vigilance.

_Watching the tangled threads of time, marking the minutes and numbering the hours of his absence._

Waiting for the day our father will come home.

"You okay, sweetheart?"

I find a smile for my escort’s concern.

"Yeah," I decide. "Just thinking. You know."

"M’mh’mm." _He_ knows. Better than anyone. "About anything in particular?"

_Just the usual things; cause and effect, right and wrong, fate and fortune ..._

I take a long time to answer him.

"Spaghetti," I say eventually.

And then I just _have_ to laugh ...


End file.
